Re: Shape Manager?

[Jeff Wilson <jwilson(at)blur.com>]

Hey Brad.  It should work with shapes on top of envelopes.  We use that method here on top of Face Robot which has all kinds of stuff going on in the stack.  You can also go old-school and model on top of your result, zero out the sliders, select the cluster and do Animate > Shape > Store Shape Key.  This will have the side effect of adding two copies of the new shape to Shape Manager, but you can delete one.  The first method should work fine though, although I'm sure I don't understand the complexity of your setup.

I would also like to be able to organize the manager better.  The one thing I really want is to be able to exclude shapes altogether.  With the mixer, you could have 250 shapes, but only use 3 of them.  Shape Manager just shows you everything, like it or not.

btw, Hello everyone.  I just finally subscribed :)

-Jeff



Bradley Gabe wrote:

Thanks George. So at least the concept is feasible!

I think our main problem is that we are linking our shape sliders to a
custom key panel. So a single slider, "LeftSmile" is pushing an envelope
AND corrective face shapes.

Unfortunately, the workflow of this workaround is not going to work for
a more complex shape rig.

I think the solution to this workflow issue might be something as simple
as an option to ignore Cluster Shape Combiner Ops when storing new
shapes.

  

We've found a work around to this, Brad......I'm not sure if it's a 
loophole or what.....but we can model a new shape with the other shapes 
applied on the object.

 You can test it out if you want.

With the Shape Manager open and the "Animate" panel showing, (Make sure 
you're in Shape Modeling Mode) you can tweak the model's geometry with 
what ever shapes you have dialed in......once you've made the changes, 
"Zero out" your sliders (with key all off, this should only reset the 
sliders til you scroll thru the timeline) then go to the "Create Panel" 
and then back to the "Animate Panel"...you should have a new slider with 
only the change and not all the other shapes multiplied on top.

There you go, test it out and see if it works for your project.

George




Bradley Gabe wrote:
    

We've been using it quite extensively on a creature project (100+ facial
shapes). I have to say it's quite a nice improvement over the older way
of working.

However, the one major workflow issue we have been having is that you
cannot work on a new shape while any older shapes are applied. I'm
hoping this is only an error on our part and somebody knows how to do
this:

Model the left side of your creature smile. Next, try to model the right
side of the smile while the left smile is applied. 

Using the Shape Manager, presently we can only get 1 of 2 results:
1- A new shape is generated that includes the results of the old shape,
so we get a left smile shape and a left+right smile shape.
2- We can model the right side shape while the left is turned off, but
then the middle points that are affected by both shapes don't look right
when both shapes are applied.

In the days before the Shape Manager, it was easy to do this kind of
work. You would build your first shape and set the weight to 1 and leave
it on while you build your second shape. Then you could reduce the
weight of the first shape to 0 and store the second shape.

As far as I can tell, the Shape Manager won't even let us do the old
style workaround! If we manipulate shape clips directly in the Mixer the
Shape Manager breaks. :-/

-Brad

  
      

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bradley Gabe" <withanar(at)stanwinston.com>
To: <xsi(at)Softimage.COM>
Sent: Friday, June 30, 2006 11:46 AM
Subject: Shape Manager?


    
        

Just curious. Is anyone else out there using the Shape Manager
extensively for production work?

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